Article 23
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Naomi Atkins
About my work
I’ve been studying human trafficking. It took me several years to comprehend the complex nature of trafficking and anti-trafficking responses, and I’m still learning. These complexities are easily lost in narratives of ‘organised crime’, ‘unscrupulous traffickers’, ‘illegal migration’, ‘bad employers’, ‘backward cultures’ and ‘sex slavery’. These narratives simplify exploitation and inform easy responses that do not prevent and rectify exploitation and abuse, and fail to challenge global inequalities.
I wanted to highlight that labour rights are for EVERYONE, not just the socially and economically privileged. I also wanted to recognise and support the critical voices and efforts of precarious workers who largely continue to be silenced. The red umbrella, for instance, is a shout-out to sex workers and their amazing resistance, resilience and advocacy.
I used bright colours and soft lines and texture in my design to present the beauty of an inclusive and equitable world without the physical and social barriers that perpetuate labour exploitation and abuse.
- Naomi Atkins
About me
Naomi Atkins is a student, maker, activist, and group fitness instructor based in Canberra, Australia. She is currently pursuing her PhD in international relations at the Australian National University.
Her research explores the perceptions, practices and power relations that shape, inform and limit counter-human trafficking responses in Australia and Australia’s anti-trafficking activities in South-east Asia. Naomi applies a feminist research ethic to her multi-disciplinary work, which traverses feminist and critical security studies, identity politics, border and migration studies, criminology and sociology.
Her interest in social justice, gender equality and community-building has shaped her research and art practice, and extends to her work as a group fitness instructor. Parallel with building her clients’ physical fitness and health, Naomi uses group fitness to build participants’ (particularly women’s) confidence, expand their social and support networks, and break down barriers through music, movement, connection and celebration of other cultures.
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